ot his rights for the meal which the North
Wind had blown away. October, 1870.

III. WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS.

IT is related by Ovid that Lykaon, king of Arkadia, once invited Zeus
to dinner, and served up for him a dish of human flesh, in order to test
the god's omniscience. But the trick miserably failed, and the impious
monarch received the punishment which his crime had merited. He was
transformed into a wolf, that he might henceforth feed upon the viands
with which he had dared to pollute the table of the king of Olympos.
From that time forth, according to Pliny, a noble Arkadian was each
year, on the festival of Zeus Lykaios, led to the margin of a certain
lake. Hanging his clothes upon a tree, he then plunged into the water
and became a wolf. For the space of nine years he roamed about the
adjacent woods, and then, if he had not tasted human flesh during all
this time, he was allowed to swim back to the place where his clothes
were hanging, put them on, and return to his natural form. It is further
related of a certain Demainetos, that, having once been present at
a human sacrifice to Zeus Lykaios, he ate of the flesh, and was
transformed into a wolf for a term of ten years. [64]

These and other similar mythical germs were developed by the mediaeval
imagination into the horrible superstition of werewolves.

A werewolf, or loup-garou [65] was a person who had the power of
transforming himself into a wolf, being endowed, while in the lupine
state, with the intelligence of a man, the ferocity of a wolf, and the
irresistible strength of a demon. The ancients believed in the existence
of such persons; but in the Middle Ages the metamorphosis was supposed
to be a phenomenon of daily occurrence, and even at the present day,
in secluded portions of Europe, the superstition is still cherished
by peasants. The belief, moreover, is supported by a vast amount
of evidence, which can neither be argued nor pooh-poohed into
insignificance. It is the business of the comparative mythologist to
trace the pedigree of the ideas from which such a conception may have
sprung; while to the critical historian belongs the task of ascertaining
and classifying the actual facts which this particular conception was
used to interpret.

The mediaeval belief in werewolves is especially adapted to illustrate
the complicated manner in which divers mythical conceptions and
misunderstood natural occurrences will combine to generate a